July 31, 2026
Political scientist Vladimir Martirosyan writes on his Facebook page.
“Maybe we should talk seriously.
“The kidnapping of politics. How does Armenia pay the price of the reproduction of power”
The elections are over, the account closing period has begun. The reproduction of power in politics never ends with elections. It ends only when the full political price of victory is paid.
That price is always paid in three directions.
- To the people.
- The political system.
- External power centers.
The main question of Armenia’s post-election reality today is not who will be arrested tomorrow. The main question is: who receives the political dividend paid for the reproduction of power?
In order to understand the answer to this question, it is necessary to simultaneously look at two seemingly unrelated processes. One inside, the other outside. In fact, they are two sides of the same political mechanism.
“The Hijacking of Politics”
Open the news of any day and you will see that the main topic is no longer politics. It has become a never-ending stream of arrests, criminal cases, detentions, court hearings, immunity issues, bails, investigatory decisions and judicial comments.
Pay attention to the most important change. The main actors are no longer politicians. They are lawyers, prosecutors, investigators, judges. Political debate has been replaced by litigious language, political programs by accusations, political competition by criminal cases. This is not a news accident. This is a serious political technology. The government controls and manages the protest, because it has designated its place and field. And whoever chooses the field of struggle, sooner or later begins to dictate the logic and rules of the struggle.
If the government succeeds in moving the political struggle from the square to the court, it changes not only the geography of the struggle, but also the physics of politics. If before the opposition itself decided the political time, now that time is decided by the investigator, the prosecutor and the judge.
As a result, political time is replaced by trial time, the street by a court yard, political thought by waiting for a judge’s decision, and political initiative by an endless defensive reaction.
The greatest defeat of politics is not prison. The biggest defeat of politics is the moment when the political force begins to live according to the schedule made by the government. When your political activity is determined by the investigator’s notice, your rally by the time of the court session, your news by the detention request, and your agenda by another criminal case initiated by the government.
At that moment, you are no longer creating a political agenda. You consume the agenda created by someone else.
This is the biggest strategic advantage of the government. Not that the opposition is protesting, but that the opposition no longer independently decides when, against what and in what form it should protest. Each criminal case creates a separate center of attention, each court hearing a separate emotional channel, each social dissatisfaction remains a separate island, and the fragmented dissatisfaction never turns into a unified political pressure.
While everyone is looking at the courts, a second, much deeper process is developing.
States do not live on news, but on obligations. During the election campaign, the public was mainly presented with a toxic internal political agenda. This was done in order to overshadow another question: “What foreign political obligations has Armenia undertaken on the way to the reproduction of power?” That question was not raised because that was the price of victory. And now the stage of paying that price has begun.
Azerbaijan continues to advance its priorities, including the issue of constitutional changes in the Republic of Armenia.
Russia is waiting for Armenia to finally clarify its strategic choice regarding security and integration directions and to hold a referendum in Armenia.
The European Union expects Armenia to remain on a strictly anti-Russian line in its foreign political cooperation, and thereby keeps the deepening and continuity of the entire cooperation in limbo.
The United States is interested in the strengthening of a new strategic arrangement in the South Caucasus and expects from Armenia that the US interests will be taken into account, especially in the direction of Iran.
Different interests, different goals, but one common logic. Everyone is waiting for Armenia to take the steps that, in their opinion, correspond to their strategic interests. However, the most dangerous change here is not even that.
The dangerous thing is that today the external actors are already publicly expressing themselves regarding the constitutional, integration and internal political processes of Armenia. This in itself is not a new phenomenon. The new thing is that such statements are often perceived not as an exception, but as a natural component of the political process. From a political science point of view, this is a dangerous borderline.
When external actors make sure that their expectations are not only heard, but gradually become part of the internal political agenda, a new relationship is formed. In this relationship, the external influence begins to spread not only on the foreign policy, but also on the internal institutional level of the state. There is no vacuum of influence in international relations. If the state weakens the boundaries of its political independence, those boundaries are quickly filled with external expectations. And from the moment when external expectations become one of the determining factors of the internal agenda, sovereignty begins to recede. It happens not with one signature, not with one big contract, but with the accumulation of many “small”, “technical”, “temporary” and “inevitable” concessions.
This is exactly how states lose political subjectivity, with “accumulations”. What is now slowly unfolding as a coercion to RA is the result of that accumulation, and that accumulation, in turn, is the result of the power preservation policy.
“Two processes. One strategy.”
At first glance, it seems that the domestic criminal agenda and foreign political developments are unrelated. In fact, they are interrelated processes.
- Inside, politics is replaced by lawsuits.
- Outside, the state agenda constantly clashes with foreign expectations.
- Inside, political behavior is controlled.
- Outside, the state strategic direction.
This is the double payment of the political price of reproduction of power. One is internal, the other is external.
And as long as society is focused on internal noise, external strategic decisions are far more easily out of public political control.
And where is Armenia?
If Azerbaijan is waiting for its part…
If Russia is waiting for its share…
If Europe is waiting for its share…
If the US is waiting for its share of…
Then where is the section of Armenia? Where is the increase in security? Where is the economic development? Where is the strengthening of state institutions? Where is the deepening of sovereignty?
If there is no clear, public and measurable answer to these questions, then the most dangerous political situation arises. When everyone expects something from you, and you don’t know what you will get in return, you gradually stop being a full subject of the negotiation.
Ելքը․
The legal battle must continue. However, politics cannot be limited to courts. The court decides the legal fate of a person. Politics determines the fate of the state.
The main problem of the opposition is not to abandon the courts.
The main task is to return one’s own political initiative: one’s own agenda, one’s own time, one’s own topics, one’s own rules of the game, one’s own places of protest, one’s own political thought.
The highest level of political struggle is not to respond to every move of the opponent. The highest level of politics is to force the enemy to respond to your initiatives. History has repeatedly shown that systems do not lose where they have chosen the battlefield. They lose when they lose control over the political behavior of society.
Հ․Գ․ States are not destroyed only by wars. They are also destroyed when the society is so busy with the current noise that it does not notice when the strategic direction of the state changes on its behalf.
Therefore, the main political question of Armenia today is not who will be arrested tomorrow. The main question is this: “Who writes Armenia’s political agenda today?”
If that agenda is written in the courts, and the country’s strategic decisions are formed under the constant pressure of external expectations, then we are already dealing not only with the post-election political crisis, but also with the crisis of state management. And history never remembers such crises as another political scandal. It remembers them as turning points in the fate of states.
Հ․Գ․ Stay strong! I will come again.)”
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Disclaimer: This article was contributed and translated into English by Emil Lazarian. While we strive for quality, the views and accuracy of the content remain the responsibility of the contributor. Please verify all facts independently before reposting or citing.
Direct link to this article: https://www.armenianclub.com/2026/08/01/the-kidnapping-of-politics-how-will-the-reproduction-of-power-pay-the-price/
